“N…Nor…,” I cried. “Please help me, please, it hurts, it hurts. I can’t breathe. Please…”

“You’re going to be all right,” he said fiercely. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

There was pounding and screaming all around me. For one horrifying moment, I thought that the shrieking was coming from me, but my throat and voice were frozen. I couldn’t breathe—I couldn’t breathe.

“Shut…door…here!”

“Storm…help…”

“Get over here!” North barked. His face turned next to my ear, and I could feel his hand rubbing my chest for a brief moment. “Just breathe, Syd. I’m here. I know it hurts, but you have to breathe, you stubborn girl….”

I was gasping, willing my hands to lift from my lap to pry off the imaginary fingers that had encircled my throat. Everything was lethargic and cold and dark except for North’s glove and its hard, uneven circles. That glove and the slowing beat of my heart.

“Mix the heartroot in now; just squeeze out two drops or it’ll kill her—can you possibly go any faster? Give me the bowl; just let me do it—here, now put it over the fire—have you never made a kulde antidote before?”

“Wayland! Don’t…”

“…the storm…get more…”

“The girl…”

“…Sydelle…look…she’s not…”

“Be quiet, both of you!” North thundered, and the room was silent once again. North’s body was shaking erratically, and he was breathing against my ear, breathing hard as if for both of us. He grasped my jaw gently and forced it open. Something hard was pressed against my lips.

“You have to drink this. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Please drink it, please.”

The warm liquid went down my throat, even as I coughed and sputtered against it. Disgusting. It tasted of death and dirt.

North held me the entire time, forcing me to drink all of the bowl’s contents. Every single burning, foul drop.

I felt…

I felt nothing. And then everything.

This time I knew I was the one screaming. Beneath my skin, everything burst back to life with a roaring blaze that consumed me, pushing its way through my veins and forcing out the tolerable numbness behind my eyes. My head was thundering in pain.

Then North was holding the same bowl under my face, whispering in my ear, rubbing warm circles on my back.

“You have to spit it up—you have to get it out of you, Syd,” he said. “Throw it up!”

If I had been myself in that instant I might have been embarrassed, but I did exactly as I was told. I threw up until there was nothing left in me but dry heaves and thick tears.

Somewhere a door shut, but all I could hear was North’s voice; all I could feel was his warm breath on the back of my neck.

“That’s my girl,” he said. Sensation was tingling in my toes and fingers, but I still couldn’t move, paralyzed by the pain the cold had left behind, by its last grip on my body.

That, and the solid, undeniable warmth that was North.

The wizard fell back against the wall in exhaustion. He held me against him gently, as if I was glass—as if I could shatter and fall away from him at any moment and leave him breathless and alone once more.

“That’s my girl…,” he whispered, resting his cheek against my shoulder.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When I was a child, no older than five, I came down with an illness that left me bedridden for weeks. I have very few memories of that time. Flashes of my mother’s pale face, the wide rims of the doctor’s glasses. Mostly, I remembered the pain: the heaviness of my limbs, my head too weak to move.

It was exactly how I felt upon waking to the sun shining in my eyes and the sound of shuffling against the floor. The noise wasn’t very loud at all, but it worsened the pounding between my ears.

I blinked. My limbs were as heavy as stones; I strained my neck, trying to see what was making the noise.

A bald old man was rummaging through North’s leather bag. The sun outlined his profile, but I could still make out the deep wrinkles on his forehead and the tight line of his lips as he dug through the empty bottles. When his hand reappeared, he was clutching North’s stained purple handkerchief.

Whoever he was, he didn’t belong in North’s bag.

My voice came out a rough whisper. “Hey.”

The scrap of fabric fell from his fingertips. From beneath my layers of bedding, I glared.

“So you’re awake,” he said. He stood slowly. “Aphra!”

The old woman appeared instantly in the doorway. I felt the soft, worn material of her skirt as she knelt beside me and placed a hand on my forehead.

“How do you feel?” Her voice was the softest I had ever heard it.

“Hurts,” I confessed, closing my eyes. I heard the floorboards strain and creak beneath the man’s boots as he walked past me. There was the sound of bedding being pulled away, and a grunt from the corner of the room.

“Up, you bag of bones,” the man growled. “I let you go back to sleep earlier, but now you have no excuse.”

“Magister?” North groaned. “Gods, I was hoping that was a nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” he scoffed. “You’re lucky I came. It’s not an easy trip.”

“I didn’t ask you to come, old man,” North said. “In fact, I seem to remember telling you I wasn’t coming to see you, either.”